CULTURAL WORKINGS

Welcome to THE CULTURAL WORKER, a blog dedicated to arts of the people ranging from the radical avant garde and free jazz to dissident folk forms and popular arts . The Cultural Worker celebrates revolutionary creativity and features a variety of essays, reviews, fiction, reportage, poetry and musings through the internet pen of this writer, musician and cultural organizer. Scroll straight down and you'll also find an extensive historical Photo Exhibit of cultural workers in action, followed by a series of Radical Arts Links. The features herein will be unabashedly partisan---make no mistake about that. The concept of the cultural worker as a force of fearless creativity, of social change, indeed as an artistic arm of radicalism, has always been left-wing when applied with any degree of honesty at all. No revolutionary act can be truly complete in the absence of art, no progressive campaign can retain its message sans the daring drumbeat of invention, no act of dissent can stand so strong as that which counts the writers, musicians, painters, dancers, actors, photographers, film and performance artists within its ranks. Here's to the history and legacy of cultural work in the throes of the good fight...john pietaro

New York, NY: In the midst of reactionary fear-mongering, ongoing war, rising unemployment and a right-wing assault on organized labor, progressive artists speak out for social justice. The Dissident Arts Festival, now in its sixth year, is a platform for cultural workers to create, sing, recite, improvise, act and orate against war and inequity and in honor of the struggle of workers and the globally oppressed. Event organizer John Pietaro, a cultural and labor organizer, is proud to present the Dissident Arts Festival in conjunction with the Brecht Forum.

The Festival will open with a screening of the long-blacklisted film ‘SALT OF THE EARTH’; discussion led by film artist KEVIN KEATING will follow

Now a Manhattan mainstay, the Dissident Arts Festival was founded in upstate NY in 2006 with a primary goal of establishing an annual showcase of politically progressive music, poetry and performance art---perhaps the only such vehicle in the nation. This Festival has sought to bring together a wide variety of sounds and styles, tearing down boundaries, bending rules and infusing the arts with the strongest, most radical activism, where folk-protest song meets free improvisation and contemporary composition. Featured among our past performers and speakers were actor/raconteur Malachy McCourt, folk legend Pete Seeger, poet Louis Reyes Rivera, revolutionary hip hop group ReadNex Poetry Squad, protest/garage band The Last Internationale, labor luminary Henry Foner, topical singer Bev Grant, ‘anti-folk’ singer Lach, jazz artist Ben Barson and filmmaker Kevin Keating (“Giuliani Time”). And we presented tributes to Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Bertolt Brecht and Phil Ochs along the way. As of 2010, the Festival became affiliated with NYC’s Brecht Forum, a center of Left education and culture which has proven itself the perfect host of the Dissident Arts Festival. This year, Dissident Arts focuses on the improvisational and modernist heart of Protest Music while also featuring topical folk/acoustic performance, radical film and revolutionary poetry.

-Kevin Keating: filmmaker Kevin Keating has dozens of film and television credits over a varied career that has taken him all over the world. His passion for political filmmaking led him to productions with the Maysles Brothers and two-time Academy Award Winner Barbara Kopple, among others. Most noted for his cinematography on the brilliant “Harlan County USA”, Keating also worked on the noted Rolling Stones film “Gimme Shelter” and was staff cinematographer for WNET’s “The 51st State”. Other credits include “The Grateful Dead Movie”, “When We Were Kings”, “On Company Business” (a PBS documentary about the CIA) and “Hells Angels Forever”, which he co-directed. “Giuliani Time” represents Kevin’s most recent project as Producer/Director of a major feature documentary. This work has earned him such accolades as “Communist filmmaker joins unions in NYC to push Obama-Dodd financial takeover bill” (Andrew Breibart’s BigGovernment blog!)

-Gwen Laster: jazz violinist/vocalist; ensemble TBA. Gwen Laster performs and records internationally with a wide variety of artists in the jazz, concert, popular, avant garde and multi-cultural music genres. Artists she has worked with include Shakira (Obama inaugural concert), Alicia Keys, Rhianna, Leroy Jenkins, Anthony Braxton, Joe Giardullo, Shaggy, Aretha Franklin, Joss Stone and Haitian vocalist Emeline Michel. Her chamber and orchestral work includes Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, Harlem Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Sugar Hill Classical Band and The Braxton Opera "Shala". Laster has released two compact discs as a leader; she is currently recording "The Gameboard", based on the readings of Steve Rother's book "Re-member” and inspired by Eastern Philosophy. For more info see www.gwenlaster.com

-Steve Bloom: poet Steve is a long-time social activist and poet who lives in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been published extensively in both print and on-line journals. He has been a featured poet at readings as far away as Bakersfield, California. Steve is founder and host of the Activist Poets' Roundtable in New York City and today serves as Poetry Director of the Dissident Arts Festival. “Steve Bloom is a poet worth listening to”—Dennis Brutus, South African poet and political activist. Be sure to stop by www.stevebloompoetry.com for more on Steve

-Judy Gorman: acoustic topical singer/songwriter Judy performs in clubs, festivals, universities, peace & social justice events in over ten countries & forty-nine of these United States and has been on programs with Ani DiFranco, the Indigo Girls, Moby, Richie Havens, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Pete Seeger, Suzanne Vega, Whoopi Goldberg, James Earl Jones, Odetta, Susan Sarandon, and was a featured performer on the very first Dissident Arts Festival in 2006. She recently released THE RISING OF US ALL - 18 songs of peace & justice, women & work, struggle and celebration. This follows her disc, ANALOG GIRL IN A DIGITAL WORLD. "Her rich throaty vocals are as affecting as her thoughtful, often political lyrics” – ‘Ms. Magazine’. For more info see www.cdbaby.com/judygorman

-Mary Ellen Sanger: poet Mary Ellen lived for 17 years in Mexico, and has published short stories and poems in Spanish and English in several Mexican journals, including Luna Zeta and Zocalo. She has published poetry, essays, and stories in online venues, including Poets Against the War, Mexconnect, Mexico Files, and r.kv.ry. Her essay “A Grammar of Place” was anthologized in Mexico, a Love Story. She is currently writing a collection of short stories inspired by the women of Ixcotel State Penitentiary in Oaxaca, Mexico where she spent thirty-three days and nights falsely imprisoned in the fall of 2003. Stories from the collection have appeared in CrossBronx and J Journal, New Writing on Justice (from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice).

-NYC Metro Raging Grannies: labor/anti-war choir The Raging Grannies are an international coalition comprised of local and regional groups of mature women who sing parodies set to familiar tunes to promote peace, justice, human rights and a green planet. The New York City Metro gaggle features Corinne Willinger, Mercy Van Vlack and Sunny Armer and is accompanied by Pamela Drake on guitar.

-Jackie Sheeler: poet/singer/songwriter Award-winning poet and songwriter, Jackie has two CDs and three books under her belt so far. Her most recent collection, “Earthquake Came to Harlem,” was published by NY Quarterly Books in 2010; a CD of original songs is coming out this fall. An occasional blogger and card-carrying activist, Jackie enjoys committing random acts of kindness and random acts of righteous indignation in equal measure. Find out more: http://jackiesheeler.com

-Upsurge!: San Francisco’s radical jazz and poetry ensembleZigi Lowenberg- JazzPoetry Vocals/Raymond Nat Turner- JazzPoetry Vocals/Tony Jones- tenor saxophone/ Rudi Mwongozi- piano/Bryce Sebastian- bass/Larry Johnson- drums UpSurge! is a free-pushing jazz band with two strong poets out front, Raymond Nat Turner and Zigi Lowenberg, who chant, shout, sing, whisper, dance and speak their message. Combining poetry and jazz, male and female, Los Angeles and New York, Jewish and African-American, UpSurge! crosses boundaries, twists expectations, moves minds, and incites action while always holding true to the rhythm. The ensemble opened the historic rally in October 2001 at Oakland City Hall in support of then embattled Congresswoman Barbara Lee after her courageous, lone vote against invading Afghanistan along with Danny Glover, Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed. From a flatbed truck in March 2003 they kicked off the march from Mosswood Park to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The radical repertoire of UpSurge! includes new takes on Jazz standards, folk songs and classic JazzPoetry works. "Tough fun" - Holly Near. www.wireonfire.com/upsurge

-Sara Goudarzi : poet New York City writer and performer of poetry, Sara was born in Tehran and grew up in Iran, Kenya, and the U.S. Her writing has appeared in The Adirondack Review, National Geographic News, The Christian Science Monitor, and Drunken Boat, among others. She is the founder and co-editor of /One/ The Journal of Literature, Art and Ideas. Her CD, Oryan, Selected Poems of Baba Taher, in collaboration with Kees van den Doel, is available on CD Baby. Sara also teaches writing at NYU and is working on a first novel. Her website: www.saragoudarzi.com.

-Radio Noir: Art Deco-damaged protest music John Pietaro-Xylophone, Voice/Quincy Saul-Clarinet/Javier Miyares-Electric Guitar/Laurie Towers-Electric BassRadio Radio Noir will offer their debut performance at this year’s Dissident Arts Festival. The ensemble reflects the fervent radicalism and sounds of the 1930s even as it embraces the ethics of downtown newmusic. ---Xylophonist John Pietaro’s work reflects the xylophone soloists of the 1920s and a century of rogue percussionists and revolutionary composers, and is driven by protest songs, out jazz, punk rock and Marxism. He has performed with Alan Ginsberg, Fred Ho, Pete Seeger, the Flames of Discontent, others and writes widely for the Left press and his own blog. He works professionally in the labor movement.---Clarinetist Quincy Saul , is a performer and social activist immersed in a radical vision of his instrument even as he reaches into its rich jazz heritage. He is a member of Scientific Soul Sessions in Harlem, a research associate for the ecosocialist journal 'Capitalism Nature Socialism', and a writer with a blog at www.smashthisscreen.blogstpot.com. A student of Fred Ho, Quincy performs throughout the NY area. ---Guitarist Javier Miyares-Hernandez is a performer, composer and producer. Currently he is the creative director of 17 Frost Theater Of The Arts in Williamsburg Brooklyn, and performs with Sineparade, The Phonometricians On Cosmic Fire, and Radio Noir. Visit: www.javiermiyares.com for more information---Bassist Laurie Towers, a featured soloist with the Flames of Discontent, embraces traditions for the electric bass in jazz, R&B, and rock and has forged a ‘lead bass’ style which is reflective of her influences Carol Kaye, James Jamerson, Jaco Pastorious and Charlie Haden. Towers is a feminist, an activist and an entrepreneur and has served as a mentor to at-risk girls and victims of domestic violence.

-Robert Gibbons: poet Robert is a writer living in New York City. He has published in the recent edition of ‘the Uphook Anthology’. In addition, Mr. Gibbons has published in ‘the Palm Beach Post’ and ‘the Riverdale Press’. A performance poet, he has performed all over New York City including the Cornelia Street Cafe, Small's Jazz Night Club, and Nightingales.

-Dave Lippman & Bard of the Bankers: progressive satirist To keep the festival fairly unbalanced, Dave Lippman will present Wild Bill Bailout, the Bard of the Bankers. Lippman is widely known on many coasts and in some interiors for his sharp send-ups of topical subjects ranging from weapons of mass distraction to SUVs and the wars to defend them. He has toured widely in the United States, Europe, Australia, and war-zones of Central America in a 35-year musical career. Ex-CIA agent John Stockwell declared Lippman prescient for writing a song about the Grenada "rescue" a year before it happened; Lippman declared it manifest destiny, based on the size of the island. For all this and more be sure to see http://davelippman.com

-Angelo Verga: poet Angelo is a poet, teacher, editor, manuscript doctor and curator of innumerable literary events. His sixth collection, Praise for What Remains (Three Rooms Press, 2009), is a long poem set in the crooked footpaths of lower Manhattan. He has been widely published and anthologized, and translated into a dozen languages. His earlier publications include 33 New York City Poems (Booklyn, 2005), 3 Poets 4 Peace (Against The Tide, 2003), A Hurricane Is (Jane Street, 2002), The Six O’clock News (Wind, 1999) and Across The Street from Lincoln Hospital (New School, 1995)

-Secret Architecture: post-modern jazz on the edgeFraser Campbell – Saxophone/JJ Byars – Saxophone/Julian Smith – Bass/Zach Mangan – DrumsSecret Architecture is a creative improvisational Jazz group co founded by Fraser Campbell (Perth) and Zach Mangan (USA). Since meeting at Berklee College of Music and forming the group in 2006, they have performed successfully in many diverse and creative venues including Ibeam, Roulette, Rochester Art Center and The Cedar Cultural Center , tours of Scotland and live air-shots on BBC radio have created a notable stir for the group in Europe; they will be returning to the continent later this year. Meanwhile back in NY they hold a weekly residence at Caffe Vivaldi, one of New York City’s premier jazz venues. Secret Architecture is a “Working Group” completely free of sheet music and playing with total group interplay. The group have developed their own unique voice with an eclectic range of musical influences ranging from the likes of Ornette Coleman, Olivier Messiaen and Bjork. Don’t forget to visit: http://secretarchitecture.com

In the midst of reactionary fear-mongering, ongoing war, rising unemployment and a right-wing assault on organized labor, revolutionary artists speak out for social justice. The Dissident Arts Festival, now in its sixth year, is a platform for cultural workers to create, sing, recite, improvise, act and orate against war and inequity and in honor of the struggle of workers and the globally oppressed.

We’d like to thank all of the revolutionary cultural workers whose presence makes this event possible --as well as all of those who came before us to inspire generations of radical activists to take a stand for humanity, peace and a better world. The battle for social justice without the artists is stripped of its soul.

“In the dark times will there be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times” – Bertolt Brecht.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The Art Deco-damaged protest music of Radio Noir will be debuted at this year's Dissident Arts Festival. The new group, helmed by John Pietaro will offer a 1930s-tinged vision of so-called New Music by incorporating jazz, cabaret and early swing, into a format of protest music for today, reflecting the fervent radicalism of the Depression years while celebrating the post-punk free improv sounds of downtown. As per the call of the Festival for songs of revolution offered in new and daring ways, Radio Noir's set will be comprised of an adaption of the Brecht-Eisler classic "Song of the United Front", an original avant blues by Pietaro entitled "Langston" , an adaption of Woody Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty", a free improv over Hanns Eisler's statement against HUAC ("Fantasia in G-Men") and they will close with an exciting version of the dance standard "Temptation" by Nascio Herb Brown. Currently in rehearsal at 17 Frost Performance Theatre in Williamsburg Brooklyn, the band exudes an excitement that thrives on the agitated vibe of such combined time periods.

The line-up is as follows:

---Xylophonist John Pietaro’s work reflects the xylophone soloists of the 1920s and a century of rogue percussionists and revolutionary composers, and is further driven by protest songs, out jazz, punk rock and Marxism. He has performed with Alan Ginsberg, Fred Ho, Pete Seeger, the Flames of Discontent and others and is a contributing writer for ‘Z’, ‘Political Affairs, ‘the Nation’ and his blog ‘The Cultural Worker’. He works professionally in the labor movement.

---Clarinetist Quincy Saul , is a performer and social activist immersed in a radical vision of his instrument even as he reaches into its rich jazz heritage. He is a member of Scientific Soul Sessions in Harlem, a research associate for the ecosocialist journal 'Capitalism Nature Socialism', and a writer with a blog at www.smashthisscreen.blogstpot.com. A student of saxophonist/composer Fred Ho, Quincy performs throughout the NY area.

---Guitarist Javier Miyares is a performer, composer and producer. Currently he is the creative director of 17 Frost Theater Of The Arts in Williamsburg Brooklyn, and performs with Sineparade, The Phonometricians On Cosmic Fire, and Radio Noir. Visit: www.javiermiyares.com for more information

---Bassist Laurie Towers, a featured soloist with the Flames of Discontent, embraces traditions for the electric bass in jazz, R&B, rock and experimental music and has forged a ‘lead bass’ style which is reflective of her musical influences including Carol Kaye, James Jamerson, Jaco Pastorious and Charlie Haden. Towers is a feminist, an activist and an entrepreneur and has served as a mentor to girls at risk and victims of domestic violence.

See this powerful new ensemble at the Dissident Arts Festival, Aug 13 2011, 4PM - 11PM (Radio Noir should hit the stage around 8:30), the Brecht Forum, NYC

In the annals of US folk culture, Woody Guthrie stands as both a father figure and an enigma. Composing biting songs of dissent simultaneous to allegories of our nation’s beauty, Guthrie has the distinction of being known today as a legend with a wide following, whereas in his own time he was followed by federal agents who viewed him as part of a folksinging conspiracy. Guthrie dedicated his life to fighting for the poor and working class but must be recalled as one who wandered through his responsibilities to the point of abandoning his first wife and children. While fighting for unions and against Jim Crow, he almost singlehandedly founded the modern protest song genre--but all too often sabotaged relevant components of it’s institutions with his propensity toward restlessness and infighting. The contradictions are maddening; Woody was deeply complex, shrouded in single-minded rebellion and a lifetime of folklore.

While historians of fairer heart than Will Kaufman may choose to focus on Guthrie’s populism and love of the land, in this well-paced and artfully composed biography, we are toured through the revolutionary core of the folk song revival and its leading exponent. The winding, multi-layered Left cultural movement of the 1930s and 40s grew from age-old folk songs before becoming infused with the radicalism of industrial toilers and the guiding hand of Marxism. It produced a relentless, daring body of work that not only protested the greed of capitalist exploitation but rang out in celebration of the workers’ pride. Woody Guthrie lived to create a repertoire exemplifying this fight for the common good and in order to do so thrust himself into the heart of organized labor, the early civil rights movement, the call for peace, the intensive battle against fascism and the struggle against right-wing oppression at home. Guthrie’s writing of both poetry and prose was prolific, almost obsessive, with his dissent nearly always worn proudly, just rude enough to be heard.

Woody Guthrie: American Radical opens with an introduction that offers some rationale for the drive toward Leftism Woody felt, exemplified by some of his song quotes and bits of prose, while also clarifying author Kaufman’s own journey through music and politics (Kaufman, in addition to being a university professor is also a singer and performing musician himself). Of Guthrie’s repertoire, Kaufman wrote: “His songs could have been sung anywhere from Camp Delt to Abu Gharib to the death-row cells of the Polunksky Unit in Texas…Instinctively I’d seized on Guthrie as a link to an almost forgotten America—perhaps an America never existed…”

With a tendency toward seeking out previously unseen lyrics and other rare Guthrie writings, Kaufman produces here a volume of great value to cultural workers and historians of both music and/or the Left. Most profoundly, Kaufman reels out the deep involvement Guthrie had with the Communist Party, initially in order to perform his song “Mr. Tom Mooney is Free”, written to commemorate the pardon of celebrated union activist Mooney who’d been wrongly imprisoned for over twenty years. And shortly thereafter met Will Geer with whom he would engage in much activism on behalf of migrant farmers in California.

Wonderful detail can be drawn from Kaufman’s account of this often cloudy period, particularly Guthrie’s connection to John Steinbeck and the fundraisers they engaged in together, especially ‘the Grapes of Wrath Benefit Concert’. And from the period song notebooks Kaufman examined in his research (he spent considerable time at the Woody Guthrie Archive in NY) one can find lyrics in which Guthrie reached for something often still out of grasp. Kaufman puts into focus the power of “This Land is Your Land” in its original phase: Guthrie’s song, initially called “God Blessed America for Me”, was composed during his anxiety-provoking cross-country trip to NY in the winter of ’39 as he contemplated the hungry and destitute migrants and the plight of a nation in the throes of depression. Irving Berlin’s song “God Bless America” somehow was all the rage. The hit record by Kate Smith blared from every jukebox and roadhouse but Guthrie saw in it not only a dangerous complacency but an even more dangerous blind patriotism.

Viewing Woody Guthrie as both a leader and a follower of the radical times in which he lived, Kaufman offers considerable background on other Communist cultural workers and cites the development of folksong within same. Woody’s devotion to the Party was conflicted at times and Kaufman offers a vision for Guthrie’s rationale about shifts in Party line in this period (ie- hard-line to Popular Front and back). The presence of figures such as Alan Lomax, Leadbelly, Aunt Molly Jackson, composer Hanns Eisler, writer Dashiell Hammet, poet Walter Lowenfells and of course the Almanac Singers is poignant. In Kaufman’s hands the deeply relevant topical song book ‘Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People’—a collaboration of Guthrie, Lomax and Pete Seeger—comes to life in these pages and his statement that it’s “reality is its core of anticapitalist anger that translates into Guthrie’s explicit call for socialist revolution”, is not simply telling but unique in the realm of Guthrie biographers.

Woody’s interconnectedness with the CPUSA is clear throughout this biography, well beyond the realm of 1940. Following the fascist invasion of the Soviet Union and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Party activism increased widely and the battle against Hitler was the distinct call. Guthrie’s work on this Second Popular Front is well documented here, his radio broadcasts, journalism, and songs such as “Round and Round Hitler’s Grave”, as well as his struggle with fleeting success and periods out to sea with the Merchant Marines. Kaufman, too, found newspaper articles which offer a contemporary insight into the work of the Almanac Singers, particularly an account by ‘Daily Worker’ columnist Mike Quinn who described a downtown subway ride with the Almanacs as they performed Woody’s song “The Sinking of the Reuben James” for the riders, who soon joined in on the chorus, all too aware of the perils of servicemen from the morning headlines.

Kaufman states, as have most other historians, that Woody Guthrie was never a member of the Communist Party, instead something of a cultural attaché in the best of times, citing that Woody did not have the discipline to be accepted (this reviewer disputes this following contact with Almanac Singer Sis Cunningham in 1998 who stated that the group, shortly after her arrival in NY, went to CP headquarters together to officially join the Party). However he brings to light something quite novel: Woody’s response to the post-1945 split between the hardliners and the group standing by moderate leader Earl Browder who had dissolved the Party into a Communist Political Association as an overture to the Roosevelt Administration during the War. Kaufman demonstrates that Guthrie wholeheartedly sided with the movement to re-establish the Party proper. Woody’s letters illustrate his anger as well as, in the same period, his growing concern about the sharp rightward turn of the nation during the early Cold War. Kaufman walks the reader through the minefield of Guthrie’s encounters with a broken, splintered Left in light of HUAC, the Tenney Committee, a rapidly deteriorating labor movement and the Peekskill Riot (which Guthrie was present for -- a vocal opponent of the neo-fascist mob which attacked the concert-goers).

The world within the pages of Woody Guthrie: American Radical begins to close in on Guthrie as he experiences this assault on civil liberties concurrent to the beginnings of Huntington’s Chorea. While one is challenged with such a vivid picture of debilitating illness, it is offered here with the backdrop of the later 1950s through the ‘60s, wherein Woody’s legend began to truly take hold. First-person accounts, snippets of his writings and his diminishing trips beyond institutional walls all bring to the facts an image that is multi-faceted. There is an account of Bob Dylan attempting to mold himself into the second coming, frighteningly incorporating Woody’s jittery, spastic movements into his act at Folk City (!) which fits nicely into the accounts of Guthrie the Myth traveling across the Atlantic and beyond. Some legends are born, some are made. And Guthrie’s legend was both. As the vehicle which brought us from Old Left to the New, his was also wholly necessary.

About Me

John Pietaro, writer/musician/cultural organizer; Staff Writer, The NYC Jazz Record. Contributing Writer: Z Magazine, the Nation, CounterPunch, the Wire, many others. His latest book, ON THE CREATIVE FRONT: ESSAYS ON THE CULTURE OF LIBERATION, is under review for publication. Pietaro also wrote a chapter for the Harvey Pekar/Paul Buhle book SDS: A GRAPHIC HISTORY (2007 Hill &Wang). In 2013 he self-published a volume of contemporary proletarian fiction, NIGHT PEOPLE. Current projects: co-writing/editing the autobiography of Amina Baraka; authoring a novel. Founded NEW MASSES MEDIA in 2013, production/ publicity company. As a musician Pietaro performs on the NYC free jazz/new music circuit on hand drums, drumkit, vibraphone, percussion, voice. Over the years he has created music with Amina Baraka, Alan Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Karl Berger, Fred Ho, Ras Moshe, many more. Leader: the Red Microphone. Founder/producer, annual Dissident Arts Festival. Pietaro has spoken on arts activism at Left Forum, the Vision Festival and other venues. He is a member of the Author's Guild, PEN America, National Writers Union UAW 1981 and Jazz Journalists Association

NIGHT PEOPLE and Other Tales of Working NY

'THE RED MICROPHONE SPEAKS!' CD, 2013

"Revenge of the Atom Spies" (2007)

The Flames of Discontent: Laurie Towers & John Pietaro ..................SCROLL DOWN FOR an extensive 'PHOTO EXHIBIT' of cultural workers in history and a thorough list of 'RADICAL LINKS' !

'Little Red Song Book'

still fanning the flames

John Reed and Boardman Robinson, 1913

The revolutionary writer and political cartoonist in Europe

Edward Hopper

"Night on the El Train", 1918

Anti-War Dance

Anti-War Dance - WW1

Louis Fraina

Writer and early Communist movement leader was later purged from the CP in a haze of controversy. Currently all traces of him remain disappeared from official Party documents

William Gropper: "Revolutionary Age", July 1919

Organ of the Left-Wing of the SPUSA (roots of the CPUSA), edited by Louis Fraina

The Funeral of JOHN REED

1920--at the Kremlin Wall

'Metropolis'

Fritz Lang's powerful depiction of a futuristic society ruled by a lazy bourgeois totally dependent on the laboring of the workers in the depths of the city

'New Masses', 1928

Amazingly hip artwork by Louis Lozowick

Brecht in Leathers

Somehow encompasses all that was 30s Berlin and 70s New York all at the same time

The chilling art of Fred Ellis

from "The Daily Worker", 1931

Debs, with Max Eastman and Rose Pastor Stokes

The patron saint of the Socialist Party working closely with Communist Party cultural leaders--the arts can climb above the fray

'The Red Songbook'

compiled by members of the Composers Collective of NY, a CPUSA cultural organization

Langston Hughes

Eisler and Brecht

Composer Hanns Eisler and poet Bertolt Brecht, revolutionary artists

'Song of the United Front''

music by Hanns Eisler, lyric by Bertolt Brecht

Sid Hoff, 'The Daily Worker', 1930s

"Thank God he doesn't have to swim with the dirty masses in Coney Island"

Paul Robeson

performing for British strikers, 1930s

Stuart Davis

at work

'The Anvil'

Organ of the John Reed Club, 1934

The Rebel Song Book, 1935

Socialist Party cultural publication compiled by SP poet and journalist Samuel H. Friedman. In these fervant years Friedman almost singlehandedly led the Socialist arts program which included much live perforamnce, literature, lectures, gallery exhibits and even the radio station WEVD, named for Debs, which broadcast radio dramas, music and speeches.

The League of American Writers

1936 statement on the urgency of the Spanish Civil War by this powerfully united group of Left and liberal writers, coalesced through a CP initiaitive. The League was an an outgrowth of the American Writers Congress. As strong as this grouping was, its creation also sounded the death toll for the more radical John Reed Club, which was dissolved by Party leaders this same year.

'Waiting for Lefty', 1935

The Group Theatre's debut production of Odets immortal agit-prop play. Yes, that's a young Elia Kazan out in front shouting 'Strike! Strike!" decades before the crisis of conscience and career which saw him naming names in his second HUAC hearing. But wasn't this a time?

'Proletarin Literature in the United States'

1935, the first serious collection, edited by Granville Hicks and featuring the work of Mike Gold, Isidor Schneider, Joseph North, and other noted writers of the day

Artists Union

American Artists Congress, 1936

depicted by Stuart Davis

The Benny Goodman Quartet, 1937

Goodman's combo was revolutionary in that it was fully integrated in a time of terrible racism--further the Quartet laid down the ground work for all chamber jazz to come. The blurring solos of Lionel Hampton's vibraphone brought that instrument into the forefront as a major voice in jazz; Gene Krupa's drumming in this period also created a major role for percussionists in all aspects of this genre. Not to forget Teddy Wilson's brilliant piano playing and the clarinet of the leader!

Partisan Review editors, 1938

Phillip Rahv and Dwight McDonald and co.

'Native Son'

Richard Wright's groundbreaking novel, 1940

Disney Cartoonists Strike!

1941--the very radical cartoonists' union takes the studio by storm

Josh White, Leadbelly and friends

1940, NYC, BBC radio airshot

Leadbelly

"Bougeois Blues"

Carl Sandburg

He covered the march of Coxey's Army, became an early Socialist Party cultural worker and was still a beloved, celebrated elder of American folk culture!

John Howard Lawson, HUAC Hearing

speaking back to power

Hollywood on trial

The Ten included Herbert Biberman, screenwriter and director Ring Lardner Jr., screenwriter John Howard Lawson, screenwriter Edward Dmytryk, director Adrian Scott, producer and screenwriter Samuel Ornitz, screenwriter Lester Cole, screenwriter Albert Maltz, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter Alvah Bessie, screenwriter Also the great Charlie Chaplin left the U.S to fink work because he was blacklisted. Only 10% of the artists succeeded in rebuilding their careers.

Dalton Trumbo

HUAC hearing

Arthur Miller

HUAC vs the playwright

Paul Robeson, 1949

immediately after the Peekskill Riot

Ralph Ellison

'Invisible Man'

The Weavers

Lillian Hellman

Wonderfully atmospheric shot of the brilliant playwright who stared down HUAC

'Masses and Mainstream'

1953

'High Noon', 1952

Gary Cooper stars in the film by blacklisted writer Carl Foreman, a perfect allegory for the isolative stand of those who opposed HUAC and McCarthy

'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg

The militantly revolutionary Gay poet's groundbreaking work, 1956

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee

the couple modeled the concept of the artist/activist with their brilliant acting abilities and consistent place on the front lines of the struggles for civil rights and labor unions

Beat Poets

In this 1959 photograph taken in New York City, composer/musician David Amram (top right) is seen with some of the artists, poets and writers who would become the leaders of "The Beat Generation." They include (clockwise from Amram): poet Allen Ginsburg, writer Gregory Corso (back to camera), artist Larry Rivers and author Jack Kerouac. Photo: John Cohen, Courtesy of david amram

En Route to Chicago, '68

Jean Genet, William Burrough, Alan Ginsberg--noted poet-activists who were also loud and proud Gay liberationists

'What's Going On?'

Marvin Gaye

The Last Poets

1968: the interplay of free verse poetry, improvisation and the politicis of race and revolution

'Ohio', 1970

CSNY's song offered chilling, driving commentary on the shootings at Kent State University

War Is Over!(if you want it)

A Christmas message from John and Yoko, Times Square, NYC, 1970

Bob Marley

"Get Up, Stand Up"

Samuel Friedman

The Socialist Party's cultural leader seen here in a 1977 pic with his wife. Friedman was a journalist and activist who, after the dissolution of the SP's arts efforts, became one of the Party's candidates for often on multiple occasion (photo by Steve Rossignol).

Peter Tosh

'Talking Revolution'

Rock Against Racism

here's the album collection which chronicled the 1976 and '78 British concerts established to fight the rising trend of neo-fascist skinhead gangs in the UK

Robert Mapplethorpe

This gifted, militantly Gay photogrpaher set off a firestorm of controversy in opposition to the neo-cons of the Reagan administration and the Edwin Meese "decency" doctrine.

Patti Smith

brazenly outspoken punk poet and activist, late 1970s

'Reds' 1982

Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton as John Reed and Louise Bryant, en route to Petrograd

ROCK AGAINST REAGAN

The Dead Kennedys headed up the bill for this protest concert, Washington DC, 1983

Nuyorican Poets Cafe

'Bedtime for Democracy'

Public Enemy

Karen Finley

The sexually provacative feminist performance artist did constant battle with the neo-cons of the 1980s and '90s and became a poster child for right-wing calls to suspend funding to the NEA

'Mumia 911'

This series of arts-actions occured in multiple spaces throughout NYC and other cities in an attempt to raise both funds and awareness for the cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal, journalist and Black Panther who was framed on a police murder charge in the lates '70s and continues to sit in death row now. For this event, NY's Brecht Forum hosted an all-day marathon on September 11, 1999, the house band of which was led by John Pietaro.

Pete Seeger, Music in the History of Struggle, 1999

with the Ray Korona Band, John Pietaro on percussion. 1199SEIU auditorium, NYC

Ani DiFranco

Fred Ho

The revolutionary saxophonist/composer has successfully forged an avant garde music which bridges improvisation and New Music composition w/ Marxism, Maoism and traditional Chinese folk art.

'Not in Our Name'

Charlie Haden reunites his revolutionary ensemble one more time to speak out against the Bush administration's manipulations of the populace, 2005.

The Brecht Forum

The Brecht Forum/NYC Marxist School came to be a fixture of Left education and culture in the early 1970s lasting through 2014.

New Masses Nights

Joe Hill

The Industrial Workers Band

Arturo Giovannitti, around 1912

brilliant IWW poet/organizer who composed epic pieces about his imprisonment and the struggle for a more equitable society

Ralph Chaplin

IWW songwriter and journalist who penned "Solidarity Forever" in 1911

John Reed at his desk

note the Provincetown Playhouse poster!

Robert Minor, 'The Masses'

July 1916

Louise Bryant

Crusading journalist seen here approx 1918

Max Eastman

writer, activist, editor of 'The Masses'

Isadora Duncan

Modern Dance in revolution

Robert Minor

The radical artist and leading CPUSA functionary

Michael Gold

Cultural conscience of 'the Daily Worker', 'New Masses' and acclaimed proletarian novelist seen here addresseing a May Day crowd on the streets of Manhattan, early 1930s.

"Costume Ball--Where All Toilers Meet!"

The Daily Worker, January 14, 1928

VJ Jerome

Communist Party cultural commissar

NYC, 1931: A delegation of the John Reed Club following a trip to Harlan County, VA

John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Sam Ornitz

'The Crisis'

1933, radical magazine of Black American militancy

Marc Blitzstein

member of the Composers Collective of New York

'Negro Songs of Protest'

Compiled by Lawrence Gellert, illustrations by his brother the great Communist artist Hugo Gellert. The songs were arranged by Ellie Siegmeister of the Composers Collective of NY

'The Workers Song book, Workers Music League, 1934

compiled by the Composers Collective of New York

American Artists' Congress

Signed by AAC Secretary STUART DAVIS

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

"Class Struggle"

Diego Rivera's amazing work told the story of the workers' fight against capitalist exploitation --and was created as a commision for Rockefeller Center's main hall. It was not long before John D had the piece destroyed.

'Processional', 1937

modernist drama by John Howard Lawson, a leader of CPUSA cultural activists

The Almanac Singers, 1941

THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS

Woody

Silent speak-back to HUAC

George Orwell

the British writer maintained his democratic socialist views through his great novels

Earl Robinson, ca 1940s

member of the Composers Collective of New York, leader of the American People's Chorus and a musician of the people throughout his career. Among his compositions was "Joe Hill", "The House I Live in", "Ballad for Americans" and "Black and White"

Hanns Eisler, HUAC hearing, 1947

Trumbo and Lawson

Paul Robeson at Peekskill

Flanked by unionist and Communist guards, staring down the fascist mobs at Peekskill NY, 1949

Sinclair Lewis

'It Can't Happen Here'

Dashiell Hammet

closing out the HUAC onslaught

'Salt of the Earth'

Paul Robeson shouts down HUAC

"You are the Un-Americans--and you should be ashamed of yourselves!"

W.E.B. DuBois

Stockholm Peace Conference, 1955

'Rebel Poets of America', 1957 LP

Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Amiri Baraka

"We Insist!--Freedom Now Suite"

Max Roach with Abbey Lincoln

Lorraine Hansberry

Peter, Paul and Mary

1963 March on Washington

'Spartacus', 1964

The tale of a unified slave revolt was first written by Howard Fast in novel form and then realized for the screen by Dalton Trumbo

Bill Dixon's OCTOBER REVOLUTION IN JAZZ, 1964

John Coltrane

Seen here performing his powerful piece, "Alabama" on German television, 1965. The story of the church bombing which killed four African American girls and injured others was retold in this mournful work.

The Fugs

Radical Greenwich Village poets turn rock-n-rollers of a whole other sort, 1965

Freedom Marching

James Baldwin, Joan Baez, and James Forman (left to right) enter Montgomery, Alabama on the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights, 1965.

You Can't Jail the Revolution

Shades of Chicago, '68

Sam Rivers

The great jazz musician who helped to found the avant garde loft scene in the 1960s was devoutly outspoken with regard to radical politics and the incorporation of same into his music. He is seen here performing at his own NYC space, Studio Rivbea. From the look of that tom-tom to the left, the drummer is Milford Graves who not only broke new ground into improvisational music but its part in Black liberation and other revolutionary struggles.

Henry Cow, late '60s

British avant rock band also engaged in social statements and celebrated the music of Brecht & Eisler

Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra

1969: Bassist extraordinaire Haden (right) unites with pianist-arranger Carla Bley (left), trumpeter Don Cherry (kneeling) and a wealth of others to create a radical album of anti-war music. Included in the collection was a powerful reconfiguring of Brecht and Eisler's Song of the United Front

Gil Scott Heron

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"

MC 5

Kicking out the jam as well as the walls of conformity

Rally for John Sinclair

this fund- and awareness-raising event was in honor of the noted anti-war activist who'd been arrested on trumped-up drug charges. It featured John and Yoko, Alan Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Archie Shepp, Commander Cody and a host of others

Art Ensemble of Chicago

Revolutionary composition/improvisation: "a great Black music"

Victor Jara

The great Chilean revolutionary songwriter

TILLIE OLSEN w/MAYA ANGELOU

Writers March Against Apartheid, 1970s

Frederic Rzewski

In 1975 the composer created "THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED", inspired by the struggles of farm workers and militants around the globe

Richard Hell

Nihilistic poet of punk performing with the Voidoids at CBGB

ABC No Rio

activist performance space, NY's Lower East Side

'London Calling'

The Clash

Fela Kuti

Revolution in song from Nigeria

'Bonzo Goes to Bitburg', 1985

The Ramones satiric commentary on Reagan's visit to the Nazi soldiers cemetary

'Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing'

Artist Space, NYC, 1989: reactionaries tried at all costs to shut down this boldly outspoken exhibit on AIDS

Day Without Art

Visual AIDS and other arts activist organizations created a Day Without Art to commemorate World AIDS Day

Tupac Shakur

Militant Hip Hop 101

'Somebody Blew Up America'

Amiri Baraka, fearlessly taking on the controversial causes of the 9/11 attacks

Robeson

After falling victim to a nation which tried to disappear him, Paul Robeson is honored with his own stamp

The first Dissident Fest: The Dissident Folk Festival 2006

This event featured Malachy McCourt, Pete Seeger, Bev Grant, Lack and a bevy of radical jazz musicians, poets and more